So I sit down this morning with only enough time for a 2-man Modern queue.  It fires up and I keep a decent hand and it turns out that… He’s playing Jund!  Well, this is either my chance for redemption or time to go on tilt…

game 1:
Me: forest, birds
him: treetop village
me: razorthicket, spellskite, seer
him: swamp, smother seer (redirected to spellskite)
me: melira, golgari rot farm returning forest
him: kitchen finks
me: forest, chord of calling for 4, Redcap, c-c-c-c-combo! That’s turn 4 baby!

That’s the fastest kill I’ve been able to get so far with the deck and I’m quite glad it was against what I fear may be a bad matchup.

game 2:
he gets confidant out and torpor orb. the bob is really effective as he hits lands 3 turns in a row with it.  his fourth hit is an inquisition of kozilek that plucks one of my chords of calling (i have 3 in hand). The Torpor Orb literally knocks me out of this game as his beatdown is better than mine.

game 3:
I get a good hand with 2 Wall of Roots, Dismember, Witness, Shriekmaw, and 2 lands. Hard to beat that vs. Jund.  So he opens with turn 1 thoughtseize and turn 2 inquizition and I think I might be done, especially when he plucks my Maw, then plays a Nihil Spellbomb before i have Witness out.  *shrug* He removes my GY and draws a card but I’ve drawn… Birthing Pod!!! Yay! I sac a Roots to go get a Finks and we’re off to the races. He drops a Tarmo (5/6, yikes!) which I kill by upgrading my Finks into a 2/1 Finks and a Murderous Redcap + Dismember.  The next turn he just drops a Bob and passes and I topdeck… Gavony Township!  This card really has a great interaction with the persist guys.  So I start pumping my dudes and swinging and he can’t really keep up without a Tarmogoyf.

I think the deck needs another way to get rid of artifacts.  Qasali Pridemage just isn’t cutting it and Maelstrom Pulse can’t be tutored for… I think I need a Viridian Zealot in the board.

Basically, I felt like the deck was running out of removal spells and time versus the Blue/White Humans decks.  This led me to replace Geth’s Verdict with Tribute to Hunger (which was good when I used it).  Also, the number of mirror matches had me turn 1 Doom Blade into 1 Go for the Throat.  The Birds became a Viridian Emissary, which I later realized was a mistake, but that’s another story.  The only other changes I made were to add a Life’s Finale and Tribute to Hunger in the board for the Tree (never faced red), and the Thrun (useless 90% of the time).

The event started out promisingly enough, I was 3-0 at the halfway point (61 people meant it was 6 rounds) and it looked like smooth sailing. I had beaten one U/W Humans, one U/W Control, and I think it was a Red/Green Wolf-Run.  Then in round 4 I had my first loss to U/W Spirits (I’m calling it spirits instead of Humans because it relies far more on spirits than humans).  But you know, the standard Doomed Travelers, Snapcasters, Geists of St Traft, etc, etc.  One loss? No problem.  Then in Round 5 I played vs. the same stupid deck and once again I couldn’t beat it. I didn’t necessarily misplay, I just started drawing lands at some point and he didn’t.  Then the crushing blow came in Round 6 (which I played to keep my dignity), when I lost to the same stupid deck.  Three times in a row. In one tournament. I have played tons of U/W matches before today and I almost always beat it.  I guess today probably just wasn’t my day, but three times in a row is ridiculous!

Aside from that, there isn’t another Standard deck I even want to touch right now other than Kibler’s R/G deck, which I’m sure is terrible in the hands of anyone but Kibler.  So for the time being I’m going to shy away from Standard and think about ISD Block Constructed and Modern.  Yay for Modern!

So I took out the few spells that restricted the deck to Standard and decided to make it legal for ISD block.  After completing that, I had the following list:

4 Reckless Waif
4 Gastaf Shepherd
4 Mayor of Avabruck
4 Daybreak Ranger
2 Kruin Outlaw
3 Instigator Gang

4 Geistflame
4 Moonmist
4 Brimstone Volley
3 Garruk Relentless

9 Forest
3 Ghost Quarter
3 Kessig Wolf Run
9 Mountain

Sideboard:
3 Ancient Grudge
3 Full Moon’s Rise
4 Gnaw to the Bone
3 Bramblecrush
2 Witchbane Orb

Now, with this deck in hand, my first thought was to head to the tournament practice room and give it a go. My other thought was to just jump in a 2-man queue (because that’s often the only decent way to test a deck).   But, for some reason, before I went to actually play the deck, I decided to review what decks were popular in the format.

What I discovered were decks that were faster than mine (White human decks) and decks that would have a fairly easy time of controlling my wolves (Bloodgift Control). It’s a good thing I did this, because I’m pretty sure that my brew would have been slaughtered at the hands of these superior builds.  So without even playing a single game, I came to the conclusion that my lovely brew (awful as it was), was unplayable. This is probably the correct conclusion given that I scanned at least five tournaments worth of finishes and didn’t see a single werewolf deck.

Just a quick comparison of my deck to Bloodgift Control shows that Brimstone Volley kills all of my guys if they’re not transformed, Curse of Death’s Hold is tough to beat through, Devil’s Play is kindof a catchall (even for transformed werewolves), geistflame kills 8 of my creatures easily, and sever the bloodline is bad as well. On the plus side, Full Moon’s Rise out of the board would be highly effective.  But that’s it. In truth, my deck would just get spanked repeatedly.  So because I took the time to think out card interactions and possible game states, I avoided several hours of failed testing.

I am not abandoning the concept, though. I think that things will get a lot better for R/G Wolves when Dark Ascension comes into play.  Fling, Briarpack Alpha, Lambholt Elder, Scorned Villager, Wild Hunger, Wolfbitten Captive, Young Wolf, Huntsmaster of the Fells, and Immerwolf. There are some nice options in there that will hopefully give the cuddly, fuzzy werewolves more of a chance.

For now I’m going to test out the Bloodgift Control deck and see how fun that is. I have a feeling it will be good to drop 5/4 demons and wipe out human hordes. Rawr.

Also, here’s mine:

Gainsay (4th Place)
Modern PTQ #3290351 on 01/14/2012

Main Deck

1  Dryad Arbor
4  Forest
1  Godless Shrine
1  Golgari Rot Farm
1  Horizon Canopy
4  Misty Rainforest
2  Overgrown Tomb
2  Razorverge Thicket
2  Swamp
1  Temple Garden
4  Verdant Catacombs
23 lands

4  Birds of Paradise
1  Dark Confidant
1  Eternal Witness
1  Ethersworn Canonist
4  Kitchen Finks
3  Melira, Sylvok Outcast
1  Murderous Redcap
1  Noble Hierarch
1  Ranger of Eos
1  Reveillark
1  Spellskite
1  Sun Titan
3  Viscera Seer
4  Wall of Roots
27 creatures

4  Birthing Pod
3  Chord of Calling
3  Thoughtseize
10 other spells

Sideboard
3  Dismember
1  Kataki, War’s Wage
2  Maelstrom Pulse
2  Nihil Spellbomb
2  Obstinate Baloth
1  Orzhov Pontiff
1  Qasali Pridemage
1  Shriekmaw
1  Thoughtseize
1  Thrun, the Last Troll
15 sideboard cards

I really like utility decks and Birthing Pod strategies are no exception.  I really wanted to play a deck with Tarmogoyf in it, but the ~$80 per copy price tag has kept me at bay.  The fun thing about this deck is that I already had roughly 60% of the cards! It’s hard to argue for spending an additional $500+ for a “top tier” deck, when this one promises to be lots of fun as well.

Update: I’ve played a few matches with the deck and it sometimes seems hit or miss.  The mirror match I played wasn’t too bad, I won because I drew better.  There were a few times where it just depended on who got the Melira combo first.  I boarded in creature removal to get rid of his Meliras and disrupt his plan in general. I also played against a Gifts deck, which was considerably more difficult due to the stupidity of recurring Elesh Norn against all my 1 and 2 toughness creatures.

I don’t have much more to say about the deck except that I saw a version with Baneslayer Angel in it, which I love, but I think this version is stronger because of more expensive cards like Dark Confidant.  The only change I’ve made thus far is to remove the Horizon Canopy for a Gavony Township (because I don’t have a Canopy and don’t really feel like parting with 9 tickets to get one. I’ll post some testing results next time.